Ukraina valde Ryssland före EU - stora protester som följd, länkar i inlägg2

Optimists like to point out that Svoboda only garnered around 10 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections, so the party is much weaker than analogous right-wing movements in Hungary or France. They also note that the Jews are far from being Svoboda’s top enemy: Russians, foreign immigrants, and homosexuals figure much more prominently in their pantheon of hatred.

Leaders associated with Chabad-Lubavitch both in Kiev and Moscow have towed close to the Kremlin’s line that the Ukrainian revolution is run by fascists and neo-Nazis. Other Jewish leaders, such as Vadim Rabinovich, president of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress, didn’t take sides and issued pleas for reconciliation. Rabinovich is an interesting case. An oligarch with close ties to Russia, who made his millions under the previous regime, he gradually inched toward the opposition, and then toward acceptance of the new regime.

During the months of protests, most Ukrainian Jews felt that this was a fight they should stay out of. They didn’t trust either side. But there was a marked generational divide. Most older Jews are Russian-speaking, and support the former regime’s policy of close ties with Russia. They associate all forms of Ukrainian nationalism with the Nazi collaborators of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during World War II.

Younger Jews are more integrated into Ukrainian life and culture. They yearn to see the country become a modern European democracy, and many of them participated in the demonstrations at Independence Square. One Jewish newspaper in Kiev published an interview with a young Modern Orthodox man who joined the opposition’s paramilitary organization. He considered his activity in defense of the demonstrators a sanctification of God’s name. The young man reported that his unit had four other Jews in it, all with Israeli military training, and that he had experienced no anti-Semitism in his dealings with fellow fighters.

The most ardent Jewish supporter of Maidan has been Joseph Zissels, chairman of the Va’ad—Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities in Ukraine. Since his days as a young dissident in the 1960s, Zissels has worked to bring together the Ukrainian and Jewish movements. He spent six years in the Soviet Gulag, and went on to found the Va’ad in 1989. Zissels argues that Jews and Ukrainians need to turn a new page in their relations, and overcome old grudges, suspicions, and stereotypes. Maidan represents integration with Europe, he says. That is good for Ukraine, and is especially good for its Jews.

http://forward.com/articles/193410/will-ukraines-revolution-be-good-for-its-jews/?p=2